Meditation

We know filmmaker David Lynch for the dark surrealism of "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet," "Inland Empire" and "Twin Peaks," as well as for his deep, abiding love of coffee. Lynch is also passionate about transcendental meditation, which he first took up "on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning" in 1973. That passion spawned a book, "Catching the Big Fish," and the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Lynch spoke about what TM means for him and why others should try it too. Catch the longer podcast at latimes.com/davidlynch.

For hours, the meditation hall at Lu Mountain Temple in the south San Gabriel Valley hummed with muted chatter and camera shutter-clicks. Around the room, glass display cases held translucent urns and miniature versions of dome-shaped Buddhist shrines, or stupas, delicately arranged on burgundy-colored cloth. The urns and stupas held thousands of bright pearl-like crystals believed to be relics of the Buddha, his relatives and his disciples. A wide-eyed Julie Nguyen of Orange County stepped sideways in front of one of the display cases.

On Dec. 21, the night of the winter solstice, the fire and high winds that destroyed thousands of acres of forest and chaparral swept over the hilltops east of Ojai occupied by Meditation Mount and the Ojai Valley School. The local Fire Department and units from all over Southern California set up operations in the parking lot of Meditation Mount to continue battling the flames. At about 4 a.m., as the fire was surrounding the Ojai Valley School on the next hill above Meditation Mount, our residents were told to evacuate.

Once upon a time, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. found himself stranded in the Virgin Islands with nothing to read. This was unsettling. "Then I noticed a page stuck in a shrub," said the author of a dozen novels, including "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Galapagos." Vonnegut retrieved the weathered scrap. Then another bush caught his eye. More pages. "It was like an Easter egg hunt," he said. "I found other pages in a pool. I fished them out and dried them and began patching it all together." No Cultural Clout?

Three firebombs were hurled early Monday at a Northridge home where Buddhist services are held, igniting a fire that heavily damaged the house but injured no one, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported. The 3:23 a.m. fire in the 8300 block of Yolanda Avenue burned the wood-shingle roof and front windows of the house belonging to Pradit and Pachri Phongpharnich, authorities said. The couple and their two teen-age children escaped unharmed.

Father Michael Kennedy looks out at the rows of heads bowed in prayer, the tattooed necks and drab institutional garb of Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. He peers into young hearts wounded by violence and bearing charges of murder, robbery and drug-dealing. Here in these dark, treacherous places, he feels the presence of God.

Re "Sect Hacked Into TV, China Says," July 9: I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I had the opportunity to live in China and teach English there three years ago, when it was safe to practice Falun Gong exercises in public. I asked one of my students to teach me, and in a short time I was waking at sunrise to practice the tai chi-like exercises and meditation in a nearby park, which was brimming every morning with Falun Gong practitioners. What was notable about the practitioners I met was their tranquillity; they were quiet, yet friendly.

Everyone agrees that stressful situations make your blood pressure take off. It's the fight-or-flight, prepare-to-do-something-dramatic response your ancient ancestors had when being charged by a woolly mammoth. Your body releases stress hormones that make your heart beat faster and your blood vessels constrict, and blood pressure rockets. When the stressful situation is resolved, blood pressure comes back down. Some scientists suspect that getting stressed out too often can lead to chronic high blood pressure.